Credit Cards on UPI
Card Distribution
Year
2024-25
Type of Project
Credit Cards - Cobranded
My Role
Lead Product Desginer
Case Study
Objective
PhonePe is a UPI-first platform where transaction scale and reliability are critical. With RuPay credit cards becoming interoperable with UPI, entering the co-branded credit card space became a natural extension of the payments ecosystem.
This case study covers the program-level design of PhonePe’s co-branded credit cards, focusing on how multiple card variants were launched and scaled through a shared application, approval, and management system.
Process
As the Lead Product Designer, I was responsible for taking PhonePe’s credit card distribution from 0 → 1, as this was the company’s first entry into the credit card business.
My responsibilities included:
Owning end-to-end experience design for credit card distribution
Partnering closely with Product, Engineering, and Business
Mentoring another product designer who worked alongside me
Given my prior experience designing RuPay credit card integrations, this project closely aligned with my earlier work and allowed us to move faster while handling new constraints.
Key execution areas:
Product Detail Pages (PDPs)
Pre-issuance flow
Card upgrade / downgrade flows
Post-issuance card management journeys
Outcome
PhonePe partnered with multiple banks to launch co-branded credit cards that served different user segments and business goals.
Card portfolio at a glance:
HDFC Bank: Mass and Premium variants
SBI Card: Mass and Premium variants
Utkarsh Bank: FD-backed credit card
While each card differed in positioning and eligibility, they all shared:
A common discovery and application system
Unified verification and approval logic
A shared post-issuance management experience
This approach allowed PhonePe to scale credit cards without building isolated systems for each partner.